A Fairy Tale Without A Story - 12 Realms Review

Kickstarter was a big deal for me in 2014. I started off being very
hesitant to get involved in any games on the site, then went a bit crazy and
started backing lots of items but 80% of them were only by reputable
publishers. So far I’ve been quite lucky with what I’ve got with only one or
two items either being delayed or not quite what I was hoping for but the high
price points might make me hold back more in 2015.

One of the biggest fears I had with Kickstarter which seems to hold
merit is that a lot of games published on the site seem to conform to “style
over substance”. This is where the visual appeal of the game is blown up to
epic proportions, but at the expense of having an actual decent game underneath
or jacking the price up to impractical levels. How many copies of Myth do you
see these days? How expensive was Cthulhu Wars just to receive the actual game?
How much actual replayable gameplay is there really underneath the miniature
glossing of Zombicide?

The majority of the times, these kinds of games don’t live up to the
hype - certainly not in my books anyway. We do get some great Kickstarter games
now and again, but they don’t go mad on visual spectacles (Alien Frontiers,
Flashpoint Fire Rescue, Viticulture, etc).

12 Realms at first glance appeals to me by being part of the co-op genre
with a solo play variant and also by having a cool thematic look to it. But it
was a pricey Kickstarter at one point and it does contain a lot of “bling” so
is this just another game that proves my theory?

"Very striking cover, we'll gloss over the fact there's only 4 realms in the box!"

Depending on the
number of players you will have several realm boards on the table. The premise
is that dark invaders have infiltrated the twelve (sorry four!) realms and it’s
up to the fairy tale characters of the world to fend them off. Players will take
control of a classic character such as Snow White, The Nutcracker or Robin Hood
and move about the realms defeating the invaders and collecting artefacts until
eventually a Dark Lord will show up who must be defeated to win the game. Each
realm has a timer track that increases depending on how many invaders are left
to roam freely and if it reaches the end, its game over.

All the cards for
each Realm are shuffled together and a pre-determined number of them based on
player count are drawn at the start of the turn. Some will be treasures (grab
for a gold coin) and some will be artefacts (win condition) but most will be
various types of invaders – these are randomly placed in their respective
realms. Each hero will then take their turn by performing actions based on the
talents they possess. These range from Swiftness to Charm to Fight and more,
but the former is what allows you to move around the board. The rest of the
talents are required to despatch the invaders – i.e. some need to be charmed
away, some can be bribed, others have to be physically fought etc. In order to
despatch the invaders, you have to spend talents matching their
vulnerabilities, otherwise they remain on the board and increase the timer
track.

Heroes can switch
to different realms to assist when one becomes over-run for example and can
also visit their local towns to buy items and allies that boost their
effectiveness in the game.

Play continues on
in this fashion with the aim being to have a hero obtain all 3 artefacts within
a realm. Once this is done, they and onlythey can attempt to
defeat the Dark Lord of a realm in the same manner as the invaders when they
eventually arrive on the board. The players win the game by defeating every
Dark Lord and not allowing a realm to fall into darkness.

The Beauty of Wonderland

Now to kick-start this review (no pun intended) we’ll look at the
components themselves. These were a big part of the original Kickstarter and
they don’t disappoint. Every board is gorgeous and colourful, the cards have
detailed fairy tale style artwork and the minatures for the player characters
look fantastic, though can be a little “bendy” in aspects such as thin legs and
swords.

"The coins are plastic, but even so, they look the business"

Each realm board contrasts in colour with another, one will be bright
and pink with roses everywhere, the other will be vibrant green with forest
motives for example. You only get four in the base game though which makes the
title “12 Realms” a bit odd, but obviously this is intended for expansion in
this area. The realm cards are easily associated with their respective realm following
the same colour palette.

The miniatures are the best part though, giving even the likes of
Fantasy Flight Games a run for their money. Each fairy tale character is
represented in great detail and I’ll bet that painters have gone nuts with
these. It’s always easier to identify with a physical model rather than a chit
token.

So in terms of looks, so far we’re doing well, however things start to
take a bit of U-turn at this point when we look at graphical design. The
iconography in this game ranges from easily interpreted to downright obscure.
“Talents” are easy to tell apart when the game refers to them, but then take
one look at the player board and tell me if you can tell what some of those
special actions/abilities mean before searching the rulebook. 7 Wonders is
renowned for its intense iconography, but at least it’s pretty simplistic for
the most part to interpret or at least hazard a guess. Here some abilities look
like something I used to deal with in complex Algebra during math studies and
it gets worse when you look at the town tiles which have “discard” abilities.
They definitely seem beyond the immediate cognitive powers of most children
without assistance.

The rulebook, despite looking nice and colourful is also rather
disjointed. Since its early print days it’s gone through some revisions as I
hear the original was impossible to follow, but it’s by no means perfect still.
You can play the game from it, which I can hardly call a plus point as I kind
of expect that from a rulebook, but the chapters are arranged in such an odd
fashion that you have to constantly skip back and forth to piece it all
together in the right sequence.

Have We Reached The End Of The Book Yet?

The biggest issue I
have with the game however isn’t the graphic design. It’s the game play itself,
which in one word is just……..boring. Every single turn is a quick-fire rinse
and repeat affair of moving and removing tokens, that’s pretty much it. In
group play this gets tedious quickly but in solo play it’s an alternative
remedy for insomniacs. You spent some talent points, move your miniature around
and remove enemies from the board, turn after turn……….that’s really it...............for 60 to 90 minutes!

Each realm despite
having a different look also plays out very similarly to each other with the
only variation being slightly different abilities on invaders. All the boards
are the same with 6 zones for random invader placement and 1 town square and
there’s no differentiation between the treasures or artefacts. The town tiles
tend to just be “gain X talent” with an obscure discard ability thrown in, most
of which tend to relate to moving across multiple realms which is pointless in
a solo game where you’re only using one realm. And even the characters, which
have the potential to be really flavourful and unique merely have slightly
different starting talents (I have more swords, you have more hearts) and a
slight variation on the special ability (typically convert X to Y each turn). The
rulebook stipulates about some enemies needing to be charmed or bribed etc, but
that just equates to “spend X talent to despatch”. And why does a raccoon need
to be charmed while some turtle needs to be bribed, we don’t know, it’s purely
mechanical.

Taking the above
into account, for a game that appears to be thematic, it doesn’t half seem
abstracted to me at various times. The strangest rule I have found is that the
Dark Lord doesn’t appear until the timer track hits 16+. But the track only
increases if you have invaders undefeated on the battlefield. But what if
you’re completely on top of the game and never leaving anyone around? The timer
doesn’t increase, which means the game never ends and it breaks! You have to
actually let the invaders settle in so that the Dark Lord can appear and
then by that point you just go and one-shot him with ease. My first game I was
doing so well that I had to actually let my realm fall into chaos to bring him
out but by that point I had harvested so many bonuses from the town tiles that
I could have taken Superman on if he’d shown his face in the realm. It
pro-longed the game to an un-necessary level and broke the immersion.

There simply isn’t
enough to grip me in the game due to the over-simplistic turns by each player
and constantly removing and replacing those talent tokens on your player board
quickly gets annoying especially when by the endgame you’ve acquired another
5-10 more of them. Variant rules add in towers which are easily disposed of and
a “dark player” to make life more difficult, but they don’t improve the overall
basic nature of the gameplay and don’t even make the game that much more
difficult full stop – it’s a relative breeze to win this game on most settings.

That being said,
it’s going to be simple enough for children to play and if they like the theme,
potentially enjoy, but given the obscure iconography and rulebook, it’s going
to need parental supervision on standby and I don’t believe the parents will
get as much of a kick out of this game as the kids, but at least it’s family
time together I guess!

Verdict on 12 Realms

12 Realms conforms
to the general fear I have had with Kickstarter in the past – style over
substance. 12 Realms is an extremely pretty game with great miniature
components; that cannot be denied. But sadly what could have been an
interesting twist on the co-op genre ends up being fairly bland and boring,
which when you’re talking about fairy tale characters fighting off invaders, is
a wonder in itself.

The game is suitable for young kids who have a keen interest in fairy
tale stories so there definitely is a market for it, but anybody else is going
to left wanting more variation and complexity. But bizarre iconography
decisions and a disjointed rulebook are going to mean that someone with gaming
experience is going to be required to simply teach the game to them and I feel
sorry for that person.

You Will Like This Game If:

You
want something light and harmless for kids to play

You
love the look of all the 3D miniatures and colourful board/artwork

You
enjoy co-op games and don’t want anything even remotely complex

You Will Not Like This Game If:

You
want a challenge – it’s pretty straightforward except on very hard
settings.

You
want a cheap experience – base game + expansions will fetch a high price.

Kickstarter Expansions

If you feel that 12
Realms is a game you would like or you already own and enjoy the game, you may be interested to know that Mage
Company are introducing the next expansions Bedtime Story and Ancestor's Legacy on Kickstarter in April 2015. Check out their preview page here for more information.